In Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm credits Goethe as having “developed the idea of man’s productivity into a central point of his philosophical thinking….all decaying cultures are characterized by the tendency for pure subjectivity, while all progressive periods try to grasp the world as it is, by one’s own subjectivity, but not as separate fromContinue reading “Goethe On The ‘Inexhaustible’ Poet”
Tag Archives: poets
John Forbes’ ‘Love Poem’: War As Entertaining, Compensatory, Lullaby
Reading Kath Kenny‘s wonderful essay on the Australian poet John Forbes–a personal and literary take on his life and work–reminded me that because I was introduced to Forbes’ poetry by his close friends, I came to feel, despite never having met him in person, that I had acquired some measure of personal contact with him.Continue reading “John Forbes’ ‘Love Poem’: War As Entertaining, Compensatory, Lullaby”
John Clare On The Transcendence Nearby
In ‘John Clare and the Manifold Commons‘ (Environmental Humanities, vol. 3, 2013, pp. 71-91) Patrick Bresnihan writes, Clare’s love of the smallest and most trivial details….In its resolute ‘here-and-nowness’…describes nothing more than the most commonplace moments, moments with no higher meaning….the very ordinariness of these moments allows them to resonate with others, to provoke…‘universal feelings.’…theContinue reading “John Clare On The Transcendence Nearby”
Vilhelm Ekelund On Dogs And Literary Critics
In Nordic and Classic (reprinted in Dagbok och Diktverk by Sven Linquist, Bonniers, Stockholm 1966; excerpted in Vilhelm Ekelund: The Second Light, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1986, page 26), Vilhelm Ekelund, the master Swedish poet and aphorist, writes: Into the dog’s sense of life enters, no doubt as an essential fact, the joy thatContinue reading “Vilhelm Ekelund On Dogs And Literary Critics”
Tim Kreider and the Problem of Too Many Writers
Tim Kreider has a very familiar sounding complaint in the New York Times. It is familiar because his article follows a well-worn template of talking about the Brave New Bad World of Free Content, and because the Times routinely publishes such Op-Eds. Like most screeds put out by what I have termed ‘the whining artist‘Continue reading “Tim Kreider and the Problem of Too Many Writers”
Mukul Kesavan on Making the Familiar Strange
Mukul Kesavan concludes a wonderful essay on Lucknow, the English language, Indian writing in English, the Indian summer, and ice-cream with: [T]the point of writing isn’t to make things familiar; it is to make them strange. Kesavan is right. To read is a form of escapism and what good would it be if we all weContinue reading “Mukul Kesavan on Making the Familiar Strange”
Samir Chopra 